Top global bank chiefs jump ship

This week’s changing of the guard at Goldman Sachs, with Lloyd Blankfein, a former trader, handing over as CEO to advisory banker David Solomon, has coincided with several other departures from top banking jobs.

At BBVA, Francisco González, executive chair for 17 years, has retired. Bank of America investment bank boss Christian Meissner has quit. Andrea Orcel, his opposite number at UBS, has left to be Santander’s CEO. In recent months, two European heads of US banks — Bank of America and Citigroup — have left as well.

That a handful of senior bankers should resign simultaneously would not normally be so noteworthy. But this is not a normal juncture, either in terms of the state of banking or the state of the economies and markets that banks serve.

At last week’s annual bank conference in London hosted by Bank of America, participants noted a downbeat mood. “Everyone is waiting for something to go wrong,” one conference-goer noted. What that might be is an “unknown known”. Few financiers would deny that equity markets, bond prices, property valuations and lending portfolios are in bubble territory. A consensus seems to be emerging that something will burst in the next 18 months or so. It is just a matter of what.

The clutch of banker moves is to some extent a proxy for that turn of the cycle. At 74, González may not feel like having to manage his bank through another downturn, but some of the other departing bosses are in their mid50s or younger.

Banks these days are not the exciting places to work they were before the crash a decade ago. Profits are diminished, and capital and conduct constraints tighter. Fixing the problems of the postcrisis years has been these executives’ mission. The prospect of routine management is as unappealing as another crisis. /London, October 4.